There is a lack of opportunities in Japan to engage in communication skills education about effective interactions between pharmacists and medical staff. This is despite the fact that current pharmacy education programs should be producing clinical experts in this area. Because of this, we delivered an educational program relating to building communication skills when working in a multidisciplinary team; 29 pharmacy students took part between May and November 2011. The program was based on two components: a lecture about communication skills by a facilitator (including “active listening”, “assertiveness” and “conflict management”), and a small group discussion (SGD) relating to decisions about opioid increases/rotation using a cancer pain case as an alternative opioid treatment. After the students finished the SGD, we distributed questionnaires to them and assessed outcomes using a five-grade Likert scale. As a result of the questionnaires, their mean understanding about opioid increasing and opioid rotation were 4.59 ± 0.68 and 4.48 ± 0.69, respectively. The mean implementation score of communication skills relating to “assertiveness” was 3.62 ± 0.94, which was significantly worse when compared with that of “active listening” (4.31 ± 0.60, P = 0.003). In addition, the mean satisfaction levels of the SGD group work and the overall educational program were 4.31 ± 0.81 and 4.38 ± 0.62, respectively. Care is required when interpreting the results given the study was limited to a single institution. However, these results suggest that this type of program may be useful for supporting pharmacy students to learn about communication skills. Improved skills should result in more effective communication, when pharmacists interact with medical staff.
